


Butterflies

by draconid



Category: Thrilling Intent (Web Series)
Genre: Animal Death, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, very lightly implied
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-30
Updated: 2015-11-30
Packaged: 2018-05-04 04:11:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5319983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draconid/pseuds/draconid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Verne Matimel always did love beautiful things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Butterflies

**Author's Note:**

> Juuust moving this over from tumblr, don't mind me.
> 
> Suggested listening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2TE0DjdNqI

He liked to watch the butterflies die. Their wings would stop mid-flap, twitch and squirm as they fell delicate as petals to the cold earth. The ground was a prism of colour and patterns this time of year; blues and reds and oranges all laying together to form a carpet of corpses. Poor, pathetic things. They had no home to shelter them, no roof to keep out the plague winds. With bodies so frail and so pretty, there was no hope for them. Pretty things always died.

“Verne! Keep back, you fool of a boy!” Mother again. She was always so on edge in the autumn – he could never understand why. It wasn’t as if he was nearly as frail as a butterfly, or as helpless as one. A hand grasped his chin and pulled his face away from the foggy window, forcing him to look at her. Her face was pale as the moon and with just as many craters, scars every adult Kuravian held as proof that they had lived, that they had survived. Someday he’d have scars, too, if he survived.

A sinking feeling settled over him and there was a lump in his throat that he couldn’t seem to swallow.

“Your eighth autumn and you’re still acting the child! How many times have I told you to keep away from the windows?” Everything about her was ugly. Her eyes too close together, small and beady and black; her mouth thin and lips cracked and scabbed, pulled into a constant frown; her nose far too large for her face and bent in the middle. She was nothing like the butterflies, like the colours he only found in their deaths. She was grey and ugly and scarred. She was Kuravia. She was home.

It made him feel sick.

“I was watching the – “ A sharp sting across his right cheek, unpleasant but not unfamiliar. Verne grit his teeth and took in a deep breath, staring at the moth eaten curtain to his left. It used to be a brilliant purple – now it was hardly more than a grey rag decorated with dust and dirt.

“Look at me, boy.” He clenched his fists and jerked his head back to look her in the eyes, disgust growing in the pit of his stomach like a cancer.

“I don’t give a rat’s ass _why_ you decide to go and be a fool. I raised you Kuravian so why’re you so damn curious? Are you an Ohnorian, boy?”

“No, Mother.”  He felt like he was going to throw up. There was something building in him, something bubbling and curdling like rotten milk. His palms stung from the pressure of his nails biting into the skin but he didn’t care.

“Then stop acting like one and do your work! The Magisters will be here by first light and they’ll be expecting their take of the harvest to be clean.” She wrinkled her nose and her lips pulled back into a frown somehow deeper and uglier than the one she usually wore. Verne watched her leave, apparently reminded of her own work. The Magisters were coming, and they didn’t like to be kept waiting.

He stood there for a moment, breathing, feeling his chest expand to make room for his lungs, his body fill and fill and fill until it couldn’t hold anything more. Slowly, he exhaled and let the air leave his lungs –  but the feeling of fullness didn’t leave with it. There was something rising in him like a tide, from his toes to the tips of his still clenched fingers. Again he found his eyes drawn to the window and to the sea of dead butterflies outside.

Without a second thought he found himself walking to the door, found his hand resting on the grainy, rough surface of the handle. With the slightest of movements and the quietest of steps Verne Matimel discovered the door open before him and himself quickly walking through it. His heart pounded in his chest like a raven beating against the bars of its cage and he closed the door behind him, hoping he hadn’t been noticed.

The air tasted stale and smelled even staler, the rancid, rusty odor of decay filling his nostrils. It was choking, overwhelming, disgusting…  and there was something about it that he loved. He breathed it in in greedily, closing his eyes as he let the scent of the winds and the bodies fill him. It was the first time he had been outside in the autumn. Usually only the mages dared to brave the plague winds.

He shouldn’t have been there, but there was nothing like this inside. There was nothing like the colours, nothing like the odors, nothing like the wind running hot against his skin or the sound of the trees bowing to it. Opening his eyes, he took it all in before a particularly lovely butterfly fluttered by his head, twitching as its wings began to cease to function. Eager to get a glimpse of beauty up close, he crouched down to catch it as it fell, cupping it in his hand.

It was large with spots of pink, yellow, and black, its wings reminding him of a painting. Its feet tickled as they kicked in a futile attempt to regain some form of control. The wings fluttered, helpless and desperate. Slowly and predictably, they stopped and the little thing lay limp in his pale hand, the bright white marks from his nails still visible on his skin. The feeling in the pit of his stomach, the disgust, the lump in his throat – it all disappeared as he looked at the small, beautiful thing he held.

It was his. All of this – all of these. They were all his. There was something profound about the way they died, the way they fought for life but could never quite find it. No one else cared, no one else watched them, but he did. The grandeur of their death was his and his alone. Young as he was, Verne understood death. There was no coming back from it. Once you died, you were gone. That was nature. That was Kuravia.

And yet, somehow, he knew. A gut feeling. An instinct. A hope. With a nervous lick of his lips, he pressed his thumb into his palm with all the strength his eight year old body possessed. The rusty, metallic smell in the air only grew in intensity as his blood began to pool in his palm, painting the butterfly’s wings a brilliant scarlet.

And with the spilling of  his blood, a release.

Something in him hitched. As his blood hit the sickened air and his will broke past his doubt the buildup in his body was let loose – the energy and breath he had been keeping in for years, unaware of its presence. His hand lit up in brilliant green flame, burning the butterfly to cinders but leaving his own flesh untouched. A choked laugh escaped his throat, and with morbid curiosity and unbridled joy he brought the opposite palm to his mouth and bit, tasting copper and blood and _life._

Verne stood tall and held his hand out, letting his blood drip down onto the corpses that surrounded him. One by one the green fires sprung from the bodies touched by his blood, culminating  in a radiant inferno which encircled him. As the energy that had built up inside of him spilled out his laughter followed suit, the sound of crackling magic and a child’s joy filling the electrified air. It didn’t take long for for the butterflies to retake their places in the skies, either.

Called back to life by a love of life itself, the burning butterflies swirled round and round and round, beautiful and stark against the golden rays of the sunrise. Their wings were made of green flame, their bodies little more than embers. They surrounded the child, danced through the air and playfully flew past his head. It was as if they shared his admiration and delight, showing themselves off to a world full of death and ugliness, showing that beauty would conquer all challenges – even death.

That was the day Verne Matimel learned that pretty things didn’t always have to stay dead.


End file.
